The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to desalination and, more particularly, a heating system for heating a brine before desalination of the brine.
There are several regions in the United States (e.g., the southwestern United States including New Mexico, Southern California, and parts of Texas) and throughout the world that experience shortages in potable water supplies due, in part, to the arid climate of these geographic locales. As water supplies are limited, the need for innovative technologies and alternative water supplies for both drinking water and agriculture is important. One method for obtaining an alternative source of potable water uses desalination systems to produce the potable water.
The desalination process involves the removal of salts from seawater, agricultural run-off water, and/or brackish ground water brines to produce potable water. Membrane-based desalination may use an assortment of filtration methods, such as nanofiltration and reverse osmosis, to separate the raw stream into a desalinated water stream and a tailing stream. The tailing streams may contain various salts and other materials left over after the desalination process. Further, in certain desalination systems, it may be useful to heat the feed brine stream provided to the desalination facility (e.g., to optimize desalination, to facilitate reduced degradation of the desalination system components, etc.).
In certain configuration, warm feed brine streams may improve the capacity and/or the efficiency of membrane-based desalination equipment. Indeed, temperature optimization may both significantly reduce energy consumption and increase the permeate flux of such membrane-based systems. Furthermore, the temperature of the feed brine may be controlled for high efficiency membrane-based systems because excessive temperatures may increase maintenance and/or replacement costs.